Now, admin said
these changes were necessary but…you’d have to be pretty stupid not to see what
the general plan was here. With tenure destroyed, it was only natural for
academics to be removed from any management positions which might impede the
plundering, and faculty not in management positions could be removed at will.

That’s when the University of Wisconsin at
Stevens Point announcedits plan
to cut 13 majors -- including those in anchor humanities departments such as
English and history and all three of the foreign languages offered -- and, with
them, faculty jobs. Tenured professors may well lose their positions.

--“may”? HAhahahaha, nice attempt at sugar
coating.

Wow, removing English and history? Those
are…pretty foundational concepts for an educated person in this country to not
know. We’re already at the point where college graduates are vague on what
century the US Civil War was fought, and can’t find Europe, much less individual
European countries, on a globe, and similarly their grasp of English is usually
sketchy at best.

The reason for this is because the
material taught in these college courses has, much like in mathematics, been
watered down to the point that what you learn there is little different than
what you might find in a 9th grade course.

I guess it’s nice that Wisconsin will
cover up their fraud by eliminating the courses entirely but…yowza, that’s
quite the gutting of education.

What, pray tell, will Wisconsin Higher Ed
focus on now?

The plan is part of the campus’s Point Forward initiative
to stabilize enrollment by investing scarce resources into…business, chemical
engineering, computer information systems, conservation law enforcement, fire
science and graphic design.

“Scarce
resources”? Maybe if the schools didn’t pour endless resources into
“initiatives” and insane administrative pay, we’d have the resources. I’m
sorry, student loan debt has gone up half a trillion dollars in the last five
years, and these institutions get great tax breaks and other boons from the
governments supporting them. It’s hard to take that “scarce resources” line
seriously when I know so much about how the money is being spent.

“Stabilize
enrollment” is an understandable goal. Our “leaders” in higher education piled
huge rewards on themselves back when higher education was growing—the business
model then was “lower standards so anyone who wanted free money could stay on
campus,” and it worked. Unfortunately, around 80% of the population now goes to
college, and the 20% left are so generally so low in intelligence or capacity that
there’s just no way to call them college material no matter how much standards
are lowered.

Additionally,
enough people know the “free money” game is rigged, that the money gained
through the student loan scam is a trap from which students (at least
those who can’t become prostitutes) cannot hope to escape. Higher ed
in its current form has run out of suckers. It’s that simple.

Growth isn’t
possible, not that the leaders will reduce their pay for failing to maintain growth.
Now the plan is to “stabilize” enrollment, and to do this by removing academic
knowledge from campus.

For what it’s
worth, I see their point to some extent: the only reason you should go into
debt is to get something that will help pay off the debt. So, yes, with tuition
so high that going into debt is the most common way of going to college, it
makes sense to focus on jobs training programs. That said, higher education
isn’t supposed to be a jobs training program, and seeing how badly higher education
has failed, the Wisconsin state government would be better off with jobs
training by creating actual jobs training programs…there’s just no reason to
trust Wisconsin higher ed to do the job right.

The cynical view of the
new Stevens Point plan, held by many faculty members on that campus and off, is
that it’s exactly the kind of thing the Legislature, regents and administrators
who supported those changes had in mind all along.

It’s “cynical” to watch
the chess pieces move on a board and realize when the checkmate is coming?
Seriously, the only possible reason to cancel tenure contracts and remove
faculty from management positions was to get rid of faculty and their
insistence on educating people. There’s nothing “cynical” about that.

The less cynical view shared by others,
including Provost Greg Summers, is that the changes present an opportunity for
Stevens Point to fight for its future as enrollment declines and state
funding dwindles. The campus faces a $4.5 million deficit over two years.

“There’s absolutely some
truth in there -- this new [tenure] policy provides us an avenue that would
perhaps not be possible otherwise,” Summers said in an interview. “But there is
absolutely no truth to the idea there was a purposeful agenda. Higher education
institutions, no matter where they are, need to be more nimble, and we’ve been
urging redirection for a long time.”

Wisconsin higher
ed, like every other state’s higher education system, is completely bloated
with people at the top raking in the plunder. All Wisconsin would need to do to
make up the shortfall is get rid of NINE, just NINE, of these overpaid admin,
of the 500 or so they employ, if not more.

Instead of a 2%
reduction of the failed leadership, they’ll close down multiple departments and
eliminate 13 majors, in the process fire perhaps a hundred or so faculty,
destroy academics in Wisconsin, and call it a day.

Hey, start paying
me that kind of money and perhaps I’ll be less cynical too.

While enrollments are somewhat steady right
now, Summers said, all those factors will make Stevens Point’s
target enrollment of about 8,000 difficult to maintain.

The school has
around 500 faculty, but, alas, and there are more administrators than faculty
on most campuses today, so my estimate of 500 admin is reasonable enough. It’d
be nice to know an exact number, because I’m certain with the firing of so many
faculty, there won’t be a commensurate firing of admin. But there should be
right? I mean, with less serfs to administrate, you should have less
administrators.

But I again want
to point out, their claimed budget shortfall could be fixed by eliminating 20%
of the faculty…or 2% of the admin. Is the purpose of the school education, or
administration? Obviously, they’re saying it’s all about administration.

Prospective Wisconsin
students should get that message loud and clear, and go elsewhere.